Jun 9, 2015

Fading Park Postcards Of Allentown

While Allentown continues it's efforts to establish a dog park, the parks themselves are going to the dogs. Take an aging park system, combine it with an administration composed of people from out of town with no institutional memory of the city, and the the famous images of Allentown are disappearing . This year the dogs got more time in Cedar Beach Pool than the residents. Cedar Beach is closed for the season; Of course, that's what they said when Fountain Pool first closed. The stone stairwell, going down into Union Terrace off St. Elmo Street, is crumbling. The park is now called Joseph S. Daddona Lake and Terrace. With Cedar Pool closed, Irving Park, with the first pool in the city, will be renamed Andre Reed Park. One stone staircase in that park was removed several years ago, rather than repaired. It won't be too long before people look at an old park postcard, and wonder where that picture was taken.

It's obvious to me - those WPA projects were works of art, by European master craftsmen. There's no way someone with a degree in 'city planning' or 'recreation' could even visualize something of that magnitude.

You're fighting the quadruple whammy:

#1. The recreation planners are all about bike trails and play grounds (with equipment probably made in China.) They can get money and recognition for this. It advances their career.

#2. The park people want everything 'naturalized' - which means it looks like hell. They get money and control for this.

#3. The general public has no appreciation for that WPA work. They're on their iPhone.

#4. Current bureaucrats see no political gain in preserving those works, and they are mostly like the general public.

Doug_b is correct.So now that we have that straight, all that is left is to declare the WPA structures historic, and the parks in which they are sited historic districts.

Ludicrous idea, of course. In Maryland, or New York, or Charleston SC, it would have already been accomplished and the structures would not only be intact, they would be fully restored and even become a tourist attraction in their own right.